Heavenly blue

There is something mysterious about this stunning flower, the Ipomoea. Its twisting habit, its daily dance with the sun and the moon, has always captured my attention, wherever I happen to find it. It is so tender and yet so determined in its stern ritual, that Carl Linnaeus, the XVIII century botanist, included it in his Horologium Florae, the flower clock.
On a splendid island in the middle of the Adriatic sea I was offered a magnificent view. While walking in a tiny alley in the scorching sun of the early afternoon, just behind an unsuspected corner, I saw a huge and lush blanket of heavenly blue ipomoeas covering an abandoned backyard and cascading on the neighbors’ fence and gate. I was transfixed by their richness and I could not understand how such delicate flowers could stand that temperature and parade their beauty with such a superior attitude. The following days I would pass by just to marvel at its twisting in the evening and early in the morning.
What a lovely memory.

Simonetta Ronconi